


make it a good one

by alexanger



Series: good/bad/dirty [3]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 14:07:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9902111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexanger/pseuds/alexanger
Summary: time is no longer linear. he can't make the moments line up.





	

“What happens when we die?” Hamilton asks.

“What - your folk, or mine?”

Hamilton's tongue and teeth frame the words _I wasn't aware there was a difference_ and he gags on them. Instead, he says, “well, both, I suppose.”

All the sunny clearings run together but Laurens claims to know the differences between each one - and perhaps he's right, perhaps he does see the minute differences between the ferns and mosses and grasses and wildflowers. Hamilton lays with his head in Laurens’s lap, peering up at the sky.

And here he is, laying in the sun and thinking about death.

“Oh,” says Laurens, and a smile breaks over his face. “I don't know too much about your folk - but we become trees.”

“You become -”

Laurens offers Hamilton his hand. Hamilton examines it closely - the dirt beneath his nails, the veins on the inside of his wrist, the freckles sprayed anywhere the light touches. He seems too soft, far too much muscle and sinew, to explode into leaves and limbs and trunk.

“We have wood in our bones,” Laurens says. “Roots in our feet. And when we die - well, human custom is to bury, is it not? Like planting an acorn. We rise. None of us ever truly die.”

“What if you were to be burnt?” Hamilton asks.

Laurens suddenly looks as though he's aged thirty years.

“That's murder,” he breathes.

Hamilton thinks of the roots in his feet. 

 

* * *

 

When he awakens in the morning, Hamilton isn't sure if that was a dream or a memory.

 

* * *

 

Jefferson is vexatious. What they have done, what they continue to do, could very well destroy their reputations and ruin their careers, and yet Jefferson seems to have no concept of discretion; although when Hamilton tells him this, he bares his teeth and laughs from deep in his chest.

“They won't notice a thing, my dear,” he breathes as he nips Hamilton's earlobe. One hand is tangled in Hamilton's hair, cradling his head; the other is trailing lines up and down Hamilton's thigh. Their clothes are rumpled and in their position - Hamilton seated on the desk with legs spread, Jefferson standing between his knees - there could be no excuse should someone walk in.

“Supposing someone were to suspect,” Hamilton begins, but Jefferson kisses him soundly. The kiss is deep and fluid and possessive but when Jefferson pulls back there's something sour in his face.

“Go, then,” he snaps, “if you're so frightened. Unmanful -”

He turns away, pulls his clothing into place, and pointedly ignores Hamilton.

What else is there to do?

He leaves.

 

* * *

 

There's a curious push and pull about Jefferson that Hamilton can't put his finger on. He's as antagonistic as ever on the floor, so that much, at least, has not changed - he's still predictable there. But behind closed doors, where it counts, he's strange; Hamilton might almost think there were two of him. At times Jefferson is possessive and hungry, nipping marks into Hamilton's skin and kissing every inch. In these moments, the certainty returns and Hamilton feels safe. But something will change in an instant - and he never knows what will do it - and Jefferson will snarl, showing the points of his teeth and backing away. At those times there's loathing in Jefferson's eyes.

He doesn’t love Jefferson. He _doesn’t._

But sometimes he wishes Jefferson could _stand_ him.

 

* * *

 

    “We become trees,” Laurens says. And in his face there’s no fear or mourning - just soft anticipation, something almost like resignation, but willing.

    “So you aren’t scared?” Hamilton asks.

    “How could I be scared?” Laurens raises his hand into the sunlight. The veins beneath his skin seem to glow, just for an instant, and he says, “I’ll feel sunlight on my leaves, I’ll feel my roots deep in the earth - I’ll know and I’ll be happy, and I’ll live forever. Trees go on and on and on - and our children sing to us and tell us their adventures, and I’ll have sons come to sit at my roots and speak to me of the world. Things are changing so fast, Alexander; imagine how much more change I’ll see when I have a whole second life to live?”

    Hamilton can taste ashes in his mouth. He thinks of the wood they burn together at night, the wood for their fires; he thinks of the wood they use for houses and carriages and crates and ships, all the trees that died to build a world they could no longer be part of.

    But he sees the sun in Laurens’s eyes and all he can say is, “yes -”

 

* * *

 

    Jefferson corners him like a hound that has been trailing a fox. Hamilton can almost feel hackles raising on his neck as he turns, mouth open to snarl or yelp or bite - but Jefferson’s face is soft, his lips relaxed instead of curled at the corners.

    “Hamilton,” Jefferson breathes.

    “Jefferson,” Hamilton says warily.

    “I have a gift for you,” Jefferson says, and he -

 

* * *

 

    Hamilton bolts upright in the middle of the night gasping for air. He holds himself together for a moment, and then he’s shuddering apart, tears streaming down his face, and Eliza stirs and rolls and nuzzles against him and says, “what is it - Alexander, please breathe -”

    “Is there a tree on his grave?” Hamilton manages to choke out.

    “Did he say there would be?” Eliza asks, and of _course_ she knows exactly what Hamilton is talking about. Of _course_ she knows who he means.

    “Yes,” Hamilton says. “He did.”

  “Then it’s there -” Eliza eases him onto his back, draws the covers up, and kisses the tears away from the corners of his eyes. “It must be.”

    Hamilton thinks of Laurens, thinks of the roots in his feet, thinks of a trunk exploding from his lungs and soaring up into the sky.

    “Alright,” he says, and he lays there and fails to fall asleep.

 

* * *

 

    Jefferson looks at him with disgust sometimes.

It's alright. Sometimes he's disgusted by himself.

 

* * *

 

Hamilton wishes he could understand the way humans conceptualize betrayal. He tells Eliza, time and time again, that he's learned from his tryst with poor Maria - and he isn't lying, not really, he's learned to be sneakier, to keep his habits to himself. What he hasn't learned, what he's never been able to understand, is _why_ Eliza was so upset in the first place. It wasn't as though he'd _loved_ Maria. Nor had he felt much aside from lust and pity for the girl.

It is only a betrayal to hold someone dearer than his wife, but when he tried to explain that, Eliza couldn't understand. Or wouldn't understand.

Either way, he knows now not to tell. He doesn't bring Jefferson home. He's careful not to let Jefferson leave marks. He creates fictitious meetings to cover up his absences at home. He doesn't breathe a word to anyone.

Sometimes Eliza looks at him like she knows, and he looks back innocently, knowing that, even if she doesn't understand, he's doing nothing wrong.

 

* * *

 

He doesn't lust after Jefferson when they aren't together. Just when Jefferson is nearby, his peculiar scent, the rough patches on his arms that rasp against Hamilton's skin, the lines on the sides of his neck that look like faint scars.

Hamilton still can't place the scent, and when Jefferson is near enough to smell, he's dizzy with closeness. Can't think straight. Can't sort his thoughts. All he can place is that rushing, the expanse of horizon, a sky far too large.

When Jefferson holds him, he feels like he's drowning.

 

* * *

 

They have been meeting for a month. It feels like an eternity.

 

* * *

 

The moments muddle and mix in Hamilton's mind. Was it this evening or two weeks ago that Jefferson dug his teeth into the tender flesh of his thigh and _pulled,_ as if to pare the muscle from the bone? Was it a year or an hour ago their eyes first met, or does that come later? Is there a time in the future where they will have touched for the first time? Is this time the first time? Have they ever touched before? Have they ever stopped?

There's a weight against Hamilton's sternum, where Jefferson placed it a century or a day ago.

Time is no longer linear. He can't make the moments line up.

 

* * *

 

Jefferson's breath smells like those strange salty greens Hamilton couldn't choke down and for a moment, Hamilton thinks of chlorophyll and the scent of sun filtering down through the leaves of a birch grove.

Just for a moment, he remembers that he's betrayed Laurens.

He muses on a tree rising from between John’s shattered ribs.

And then Jefferson kisses him, Jefferson consumes him, and Hamilton feels like a creature that's been plucked from its hole and swallowed alive.

 

* * *

 

“He's dead,” Hamilton says to Eliza that night. That morning. That night? It's dark -

“I know,” says Eliza, equal parts wary and sympathetic. “It's been nearly ten years now -”

“It was today,” Hamilton insists.

Eliza looks at him. There's pity in her face.

“It's every day,” he says, and he gets up and leaves the room.

 

* * *

 

\- places his hand on Hamilton's shoulder, shows him a slim chain, a dark pendant dangling from the end, and says, “may I?”

“You mean - around my neck?” Hamilton asks. “My wife might see.”

“It is unwise to refuse a gift from your lover,” Jefferson says. His voice is sharp.

“I only mean it might be wiser to carry it in a pocket,” Hamilton says. The words rush out in a hurry against Jefferson's displeasure.

“I had thought,” Jefferson says, “that our shared affection - pardon me, I misspoke. I had thought that perhaps my fondness for you was reciprocated, but I see now how foolish that thought was -”

“No, no,” Hamilton breathes, and he takes a step towards Jefferson, his hands ready to stroke and soothe.

Jefferson's eyes are bright and his eyebrows are bunched in something akin to pain. “But you refuse my gift - you refuse to wear it - what else is there to think but that you harbour no tenderness towards me?”

“Jefferson,” Hamilton pleads. His heart hurts.

“I had assumed that we were more than just - that perhaps I meant more to you than -”

“Please. I want to wear it,” says Hamilton, and he sheds his cravat and collar, lifts his shirt over his head so that he's bare from the waist up.

Jefferson stands behind him, so close Hamilton can feel a familiar firmness pressed against the small of his back, and the cold weight of the pendant settles against his sternum as Jefferson fastens the clasp.

It doesn't burn.

But it could.


End file.
